Instead, she and Luke armed with a solitary flashlight and a 1970s voice recorder break “Scream” rule #66: Don’t do the exact thing you were warned not to do.Ĭueing to the requisite creepy music and heightening up the tension for this third act are two aspects to The Innkeepers that West gets mostly right. Claire could have asked the mom, who, with her son, was seeking weekend refuge from a husband that takes her for granted, but I doubt Claire would have gotten satisfactory answers.Ĭome to think of it, though, it doesn’t really matter what those answers would have been or who supplied them, since Claire doesn’t listen. Convinced Madeline is trying to tell her something, Claire seeks advice from the spiritual advisor with a drinking problem, Leanne Rease-Jones (Kelly McGillis, whom I didn’t recognize), who just so happens to be staying the hotel on its last weekend open purely by coincidence. After a prolonged bout of red-herring gotchas, beyond obvious foreshadowing and jump scares a 14 year-old YouTuber could have dreamt up, we also learn that Madeline can play the piano. One of the reasons they’ve taken the job, is because there is some gruesome history to the establishment - supposedly Madeline O’Malley, a woman who was left at the altar on her wedding day, checked in many years ago and checked out via a hangman’s noose. Their time is spent mostly chitchatting about nonsensicals, forgetting to give guests towels (no wonder the place is going out of business) and critiquing his paranormal website that looks like it was generated in the 1980s, animated ghost and all.

A skeleton crew, consisting of the aforementioned Claire (Sara Paxton) and her equally home-bodied friend and lover of haunted things, Luke (Pat Healy), are left to tend to the last remaining guests. It takes place exclusively at The Yankee Pedlar, an old hotel that’s shuttering its doors due to a lack of patronage. That’s assuming, of course, we call this a ghost story, because in all honesty, there isn’t much of a story - paranormal or otherwise - to The Innkeepers. What’s not so fitting, thanks in part to her name and plain looks (can also add how damn annoying she is), is she is also one of the creepier things going on in this haunted house / ghost story picture. It is, therefore, a fitting name then for the boy-haircut having, wearing the same dull clothes every day, ghost hunting protagonist in Ti West’s “scarefest” The Innkeepers (even though she doesn’t do any needlepoint). For me, Claire conjures up an image of a sad, homely girl whiling away the hours, in a rocker, crocheting a sweater. It’s not, however, nearly as bad as Claire is. Alice is an unflattering name for a woman.

Film the innkeepers